Our Struggles With School: It’s Not Going Awesome

Our Struggles With School: It’s Not Going Awesome

Up to this point we have always homeschooled our girls. It’s the way our travelling lifestyle led us. I always dreamed of the days we’d be able to enrol the girls, “oh the projects I will accomplish with all that free time”. Or so I thought! Instead, having the girls in school has brought on a whole slew of struggles.

In the three months the girls have been in school we have seen many benefits, but also MANY struggles that have brought us to some serious questioning and wondering if we are doing right by our girls. Mostly for Arias.

First off, Ellia

During her first couple of weeks I almost started to cry as I secretly watched her through the school fence. She would arrive at school, put her backpack on her little hook, and then go stand alone while all the other kids played. She told me that the kids didn’t understand her and would tell her things like “no amiga”. I had to hold back the tears.

But with time things have gotten better. Her Spanish has gotten better. And she has made friends that are ok with basic conversation. She doesn’t come home heartbroken anymore.

Ellia is in Kindergarten, with a teacher that speaks no English. The benefit she has is all the content they are covering she has covered before in homeschooling, just in English. So now she is basically reviewing it all in Spanish. Also a lot of her class learning is hands-on and play oriented. She is doing really well.

For Arias, It’s Harder

Arias is older. She is in grade 3. Things are harder for her, both academically and socially. This is where my heartache lies.

Academically

Arias is an overachiever. She always has been. It’s extremely strange for me to be raising an 8-year-old that stresses over school. She gets anxious about whether she is doing things “perfect”. She constantly is striving for perfection and puts a lot of pressure on herself.

Her teacher has called me because she is uncontrollably crying in class. The class was having a test and she couldn’t understand, and didn’t have the time to write down the oral questions in Spanish. She was worried he would be angry, and she was worried because the test was peer-corrected. “One of my friends will see how bad I did.”

No matter how many times we have told her “we don’t care how you do academically in school”, she still stresses. “We have enrolled you there to learn Spanish and make friends” she still worries.

I am homeschooling her at home. This is where her grades matter. But not at school. The brick and mortar school is “extra”. Of course we want her to follow along and understand what is being taught in school, but whether she continues on to the 4th grade, that is in my homeschooling hands.

How do I help my 8-year-old with school anxiety!?

Homework

I can’t believe the amount of homework she gets. Her class receives a lot of homework. And for us it takes double the amount of time to do it. Since it is in Spanish I sit with her and work through all her work (except math). First we read it in Spanish (to work on understanding, listening, and pronunciation) and translate what we don’t understand into English. Then we work out the answer and translate it back into Spanish so she can write it out.

It’s a process. We’re talking about 2 hours a night, about 3 nights a week.

On top of her school homework, the poor kid also has homeschooling work to do with me. We were doing this for English, Math, Science, and Social subjects. But because of the size of the home-workload she was doing I have found a way to scale it down. Now we focus on English at home, and make sure she is understanding what is going on in those other subjects that are being taught in her school.

It’s a lot of work for her. And it’s a lot of work for me. I can say that I do MORE sit down work with her now than when we were just homeschooling. Homeschooling was easier in comparison.

I feel really bad for her. It’s a big workload for a kid. It’s all in a foreign language. The stress she puts on herself. The amount that she has to do. I don’t want her to resent learning, and I am starting to see her cringe and complain when it is time to sit and do homework. Where does she fit in fun and family time into her after school time?

Socially

Grade 3 girls issues. It makes my brain (and heart) hurt. Arias has fallen in with the “in” crowd. But that’s not where we want her to be, for several reasons.

First, she is not speaking as much Spanish as we had hoped because some of her classmates speak English. So, naturally, she hangs out with them. This is hindering her, because the slow learning of Spanish adds to her stress level about school.

Second, since being in school, I have actually been “called in” to the school because of her behaviour. She is picking up bad behaviour. The teacher, who is extremely attentive told me, “this isn’t her. She wasn’t like this when she started school. Now she acts like some of her troublesome friends.”

We have had this issue before. She has a strong character, and can take things to the extreme. She plays hard and doesn’t always notice when it crosses a line. (Is that what we get for letting her roughhouse!?) Being very smart she knows how to get things to go her way. We have discussed this with her. She needs to harness these powers to be a positive leader, not to be the leader of “mean girls”.

We had some pretty intense conversations with her about this. Strongly encouraging her to work on her behaviour, and that if she chooses to continue being friends with said classmates that positive behaviour is expected. “You can be friends with someone without picking up their negative traits. Maybe your good behaviour will rub off on them.” Fingers crossed.

Not only was she dishing it out, but she was also receiving it. Remember the days where one day your best friend is your best friend and the next they are not; and then they are again, and then they’re not. That’s where she is at. It’s hard sitting with her as she cries because her friend told her in plain English “I don’t like you. You’re not my friend”. Or the more physical, of her coming home with bruises because “that boy” in class keeps pinching her and she doesn’t know how to communicate to him to stop! Arias is strong, but she also has a huge heart and takes things very personally. Words, and pinching, hurt her deeply.

We keep reminding ourselves, this is part of the “social” aspects that we wanted them to learn in school. To learn how to deal with and overcome it. But then we started questioning even that. Do we really need our kid to learn to sit in a classroom with jerks for the sake of the personal growth? Do we need to have our kid act like jerk because that’s what the cool-kids do?Is the added stress, workload, and social junk she is dealing with worth it?

This is one of her “good role model” friends. We love this little girl.

Solutions???

We haven’t come up with any solid plans of attack yet. I have reduced her homeschooling workload and we’re using her school lessons as part of our home-education. We also have been encouraging playdates with good role models, to try to help the social side of things.

But for the rest???

– Pull her out of school and go back to homeschooling? Or is that giving up. We don’t want to teach that either.

– She’s only been there 3 months, do we wait it out? She is still finding her place. And her teacher is also adjusting to her needs. The next test she will do orally, since written Spanish takes her longer. He has moved the pinching boy to another work table. And he keeps in close contact with me via Whatsapp so I know how she is doing in class.

– Enrol her in a Spanish intensive course? By understanding Spanish better she would stress less about class time. But that would be even more work for her right now.

Things are not horrible right now. But they could be better.

I AM OPEN TO ANY ADVICE. THIS SCHOOL THING IS TOTALLY NEW FOR US!

I wish I could write that things are going amazingly on the school front. For Ellia they are. But for Arias we are struggling. Every day we plug away at her homework. Every day we encourage her in good behaviour. We are present and involved. We want to protect her, but we don’t want to shelter her. She can excel without her stressing. Really, we just want this to be a positive experience for her.

19 Comments

Sorry to hear things aren’t going well with school. I can totally relate: we moved to small town BC from Ontario when my daughter was 11. She had been homeschooled for 3 years (I had had enough of the bullying at her former school and the school’s refusal to deal with it) but after we moved we enrolled her in the (only) school here. Because she’d been homeschooled she was ahead academically (and the BC curriculum is waaay more relaxed than the Ontario one) and none of the kids would talk to her. This situation did not improve for the entire year she was in school. So she’s been home the past two years. I’m not totally sure that was the right thing to to, but she’s a lot happier and is making friends at her extracurricular activities. Are there other contexts in which your daughter could make friends? Homeschooling groups, classes or hobbies, or just getting to know the neighbours? Friends don’t have to be the same age…

Ugh I am so sorry to hear about your daughter’s school experience. It is so tough as a parent to see your child hurting that way. I am glad that she is happier in her current scenario. We have the girls enrolled in Hula dance class that is taught solely in Spanish, and I think I am going to up the amount of playdates that the girls have with their one friend who is an amazing little girl and a great Spanish teacher!

The one thing I never learned to do was how to struggle through something hard. School came easy and I could always be perfect without much sweat. The older I got, I only did things I knew I would be good at right away. Needless to say this caused me problems when I got to college and that had consequences for years. The stresses of childhood fade, but the support of parents is still remembered. Just a regret for me and something to consider, not a judgment either way! Good luck!

Thank you, it’s intriguing hearing the other side, encouraging hardship and learning to work your way through it. It is definitely valid. Right now we are going day by day, checking in on her on how her days are going, and having that line of communication and support open to her.

As a highschool teacher I can attest that students who arrive in high school who have been homeschooled are generally ahead academically and are generally well adjusted young people. If I could do it over I would have home-schooled my daughter until highschool and found other ways to socialize her. She was such a beautiful, creative, happy child who was brutally bullied and then ended up turning in to a bit of a bully (those who are bullied tend to become bullies) and became socially isolated in high school as a result. Elementary school is brutal for bullying esp. when someone is different. Also, don’t you and Eben speak Spanish? Could you/do you speak Spanish at home so the girls could learn it faster? The most important aspect of childhood is socialization – way more important than education (although that is important). It is so important for kids to have positive socialization. If I could do it over I would protect my child no matter what so she always felt safe and that I had her back…maybe Arias would benefit learning spanish first, and then integrate into school? Home school which she is already doing well at plus Spanish and then try again in grade 4? Esp. then she would know what everyone is saying? How difficult for all of you – we always try so hard to do our best for our children…but we can’t control the world. Good luck.

Thanks for the advice Angie. I am so sorry your daughter went through such a tough time in school. Arias has teetered the bullying line herself and we hope and keep encouraging her to use her strengths to bring kids together rather than push them away. I do speak Spanish conversationally, and I guess we could speak spanish at home, I would just be worried that I would teach them wrong because my spanish is definitely not perfect! But I am going to encourage more playdates with her school friends so that we can have her blabbering away in Spanish at home too.

This is an ongoing struggle of many parents. When our kids are away from us for such a significant amount of time it is hard to maintain influence over them. I would caution in the assumption that it’s orhers influence on her. This is somewhat of a trap that as parents when we fall into makes it hard for us to see the reality of the situation. As you have stated she has had these types of struggles before. And as parents when we are able to see the areas our children need help with we are more open to helping them in a way that is actually helpful. Teachers often read personalities wrong when they are first meeting kids and kids like Arias (and Carter) are smart enough to know how to engage adults when they first meet them. She like Carter has spent a significant amount of time around adults. That’s not a challenge for them…. being around children can be. With Carter we insist that he is in control of his emotions and actions and much like you we encourage him to use his intelligence, insight and good looks for positive rather than negative. But if he chooses negative the reality is hard. These are the lessons learned in mainstream education. I often struggle with carter being exposed to mainstream issues. But in the end hope it makes him well rounded and worldly? ❤️

I am definitely not putting all the blame on this friend of hers, I know Arias and her capabilities. I just know that she chose to be BFFs with someone who is not the best influence either. Which is why we have talked to her about being a good example, making smart decisions, and trying to use her skills for good. We haven’t restricted play with this girl, she gets playdates with her at our house where they can be supervised and then at school. Oh if only I could be a fly on the wall at school!!! There have been less and less tears at home, and the teacher hasn’t had any issues to tell me about in over a month, so we are hoping that the social side of things is getting better. Now if only we could figure out this massive amount of homework!

Tricky. We put my son into a local Chamorro school 3 years ago, after homeschool (HS). He’s going to finish 5th grade soon. Our experience has been similar to yours. He is different so he does whatever he can to fit in which brings out some bad behavior. Overall it’s a wash. He learns local culture and has learned to adapt and fit in but it wasn’t as ideal as we thought. We will bring him back to HS next year as the middle school here is really rough. Daughter has decided to stop HS and start real High School for 9th grade next year. Aprender español es muy importante. Hablar español presentará muchos oportunidades y diversión. Si fuera yo, siguiera en la escuela por lo menos un año. Suerte

Si pienso que vamos a continuir por este ano, y en el verano ella podria decidir si ella quiere hacer un otro ano o cambiar por algo de diferente. Poco a poco. She will do fine I believe, I just struggle with seeing her sad sometimes. But it will serve as a good life lesson.

I recommend you not do her Spanish school homework with her at all. Hire a tutor who speaks no English so there’s no option but to practice Spanish. If she doesn’t finish the homework she should get no penalty. Try working that out with the school as the anxiety will get worse and she needs a relief. Within a short time she will get confidence in herself again and will speed up her pace. I used to be an ESL after school tutor to kids, and I saw it with my own eyes. The struggle to the point the kids didn’t want to do the homework. So we put it aside and played. The kids learned English quickly when it was fun and a game with no pressure. When ready to tackle the homework some day or month later, the child would ask for help and do it without the old struggle. And the grades quickly bounced back.

It’s true, I hadn’t really thought about not doing homework with her, I just wanted her to understand the subject matter since the tests are what are stressing her out most. But if I can get across to the teacher that she is 100% on her own (no help from me), or maybe doing it with a Spanish friend or tutor, then maybe the content itself won’t matter as much as she is growing her understanding of Spanish

I also have a child with anxiety and experience with that. Your child has a legitimate concern with peers correcting her tests. I would approach the school to ask them to accommodate her need for being excused from that. I really hope the school will work with you to ease her burdens. A doctor diagnosis of anxiety may open doors. I have no experience with getting Individual Education Plans or special needs accommodation in another country. But in the US my daughter qualifies and receives accommodations. I have another recommendation from personal experience but you won’t want to hear it. Medication can greatly help.

Yes we are working on different school plans with her teachers, like her doing her tests orally now. We think she will be less stressed knowing that her tests aren’t timed, aren’t peer corrected, and that her teacher will see that she understands the content even if she struggles with explaining it a bit. Small changes may be all that we need at the moment. We are also thinking that with some small changes, making our home time more Spanish will help with her stress. Maybe even some relaxation techniques.

Relaxation techniques are great. There are some great kid videos on YouTube we use. Meditations, affirmations and positive self talk, breathing exercises, etc all help. Some she may not like at all. So it’s trial and error finding what clicks. Wishing you and your family peace!

This gives me anxiety too! We’re finishing building our boat and will be leaving before our daughter reaches school age. Homeschooling was always the plan, she’s bright and inquisitive already (presently 2yo) but the idea of homeschooling and “what if one day she has to go back into the schooling system?” gives me huge anxiety! Thank you for sharing your stories, I too hear that homeschooled children are often far ahead of their peers at regular school – causing a divide, even without the language barrier. I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m sure you will both do what is right for Arias. Out of curiosity, have you asked her what she wants to do in regard to the schooling scenario? All the best for you all.

Hi, yes we asked her straight out, giving her all the options, and she said she wanted to stay in school and keep doing it the way we are. So we continue. We have broken through a wall and she seems way less stress and her spanish is getting impressive given we have only been here for 6 months.